Over the last week, I've been thinking a lot about the recent Worldpay outage.
Something we’ve become to take totally for granted (contactless payments) weren’t available for a few hours. This probably wouldn’t have been nearly as high profile if it hadn’t happened during the England World Cup game against Ghana, with transactions significantly higher than an average Tuesday.
A situation that would have been high stakes anyway became even higher for WorldPay and it’s suppliers.
Technology failure happens. Systems go down, suppliers have issues. No organisation is immune from that in today's world.
What interested me most was what customers experienced because of it.
Could they make/take a payment?
Did they know what was happening?
Were they being kept informed?
Did they feel confident someone was in control?
It made me realise that operational resilience isn't just an operational issue.
It's a customer trust issue.
For years, operational resilience has quite rightly been viewed through the lens of technology, risk and compliance. Businesses ask questions like:
How quickly can we recover?
Which systems are affected?
Have we met our regulatory obligations?
What do we need to do to restore services?
All really important questions.
But I wonder if there's another one that should get just as much attention.
What does this actually feel like for your customers?
Customers don't see your operational resilience strategy, they experience the outcome of it.
They experience whether they can still do what they came to do, how quickly they get answers when something goes wrong and whether they feel confident your organisation is in control.
During the Worldpay outage, for many people that meant not being able to pay for a meal, a drink or their weekly shop. It meant having to find cash or abandon a purchase altogether. (Personally, I don’t carry my bank card these days, so I'd have been completely stuck!)
For businesses, it was a very different experience. Restaurants, pubs and retailers couldn't take payments. Teams suddenly found themselves managing frustrated customers in retail environments, which is high pressure. They were answering questions they didn't yet have the answers to and trying to keep operations moving whilst revenue was quite literally being turned away.
That's the point where operational resilience becomes much more than a technology or compliance issue.
It becomes a customer trust issue.
As businesses grow, particularly in FinTech and SaaS, operations naturally become more complex. New technology is introduced. More third-party suppliers are relied upon. Teams expand. Customer journeys evolve. Enterprise customers expect more. Regulatory expectations increase.
Growth creates incredible opportunities.
But it also creates more points where customer trust can be won... or lost.
The businesses that navigate growth successfully aren't necessarily the ones that never experience problems.
They're the ones that have thought about what happens when they do, not just from an operational perspective, but from the customer's perspective too.
So, if I were sitting in a leadership team today, these are the questions I'd be asking.
1. Which customer journeys are absolutely critical to our business?
If one stopped working tomorrow, what would our customers experience? And what would the impact be to our business.
2. If one of our key suppliers failed, would we know the impact on our customers?
Not just our systems and our revenue, but our customers and the people who rely on them.
(One of the things that makes FinTech particularly interesting is that the end user often isn't your customer at all, they're your customer's customer.
So when something goes wrong, you're not just thinking about the impact on your own organisation. You're thinking about the businesses that depend on you and the experience of the people they serve.)
3. Would every team communicate consistently during an incident?
Do teams know how to communicate and what's expected? Is there a process to follow?
Because clear communication builds confidence, confusion can totally erode it and result in more questions.
4. Do we understand who else is affected when something goes wrong?
In FinTech and SaaS, it's rarely just your organisation that's impacted. It's your customers, their customers and the wider ecosystem that relies on your services.
Have you mapped that impact? Do you have contingencies in place? Have you discussed this with your customers (it may be this is outlined in contracts with heavy financial penalties, but potentially not).
5. What have we learned from the last time something went wrong?
Every incident is an opportunity to strengthen not just your systems, but your customer experience too.
One thing I've noticed over the years is that businesses rarely lose trust because something went wrong. More often, they lose trust because customers felt uninformed, unsupported or uncertain about what was happening.
For me, that's why operational resilience can no longer sit solely with IT, Risk or Compliance.
It's a leadership conversation and it's a customer conversation.
Increasingly, I think it's one of the most important conversations growing FinTech businesses can have.
Growth brings opportunity. But it also introduces more points where things can go wrong.
Has the Worldpay outage changed the way you're thinking about operational resilience, or has it reinforced something your business was already doing well?
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